Opinion: No revolution in Donald Trump's win; the swamp is too deep to drain

President-elect Donald Trump and vice president-elect Mike Pence listen to a question from the press before their meeting with investor Wilbur Ross at Trump International Golf Club on Nov. 20, 2016 in Bedminster Township, N.J. Trump and his transition team are in the process of filling cabinet and other high level positions for the new administration.Drew Angerer / Getty Images

Academics, pundits and politicos are still going over the entrails of Hillary Clinton’s unexpected defeat at the hands of Donald Trump.

Poor turnout, complacency and hubris, Clinton’s emails: these are used to explain the Democrat’s loss. Celebrity culture, middle-American angst, white rage and post-fact politics, are employed to explain Trump’s victory.

But such explanations are only the froth on the top of a larger and deeper sea of reasons. They explain nothing at all about why the United States chose to elect someone as their president viewed as a foul mouthed, misogynistic, race-baiting, sociopath. Trump is merely the symptom of discontent with a system of governance that provides the illusion but not the reality of choice.

In Lament for a Nation, George Grant remarked that politics in the United States was comprised of variations on liberalism. He viewed the American ethos as marked by unbridled self-interest. Individual achievement is the means; the American dream – everyone a billionaire – the goal.

But not everyone can be a billionaire. A few people are winners. Trump likes these people. The rest, as he has opined, are losers.

And so they shall remain. On this point, the data is clear: the United States has far less upward social mobility than any other western country, including Canada. For those at the top, it is a land of boundless opportunity. For many others, it is far less so.

A Princeton study a couple of years ago declared that the U.S. is not in fact a democracy but, rather, an oligarchy. The trick for this oligarchy remaining in power has been to convince the mass of American voters that, by marking their “x” on a ballot every four years, they have the power to change their lot in life; that the system is not “rigged” against them but in fact offers a meaningful choice.

In the land of P. T. Barnum, it has taken little convincing. Believing that voting for party 1A or 1B is a show of real democracy at work, American voters dutifully take up pitchforks for their respective party tribes.

But it’s a sham. Gore Vidal once described the Democrats and Republicans as two wings of a single party – the Capitalist Party. They are the parties of the one per cent of the one per cent.

It is sometimes said, too, that the Democrats are the party of Wall Street, while the Republicans are the party of oil. Of such fine distinctions are great molehills made into mountains. In truth, bankers and Big Oil are not inherently adverse to each other.

The illusion of choice has served both parties well, however. Choice, after all, is a mainstay of American – indeed, western – culture, whether concerning toothpaste or politicians.

The Republicans have spent decades cultivating like Idaho potatoes the votes of social conservatives who believe their party will role back Roe vs. Wade (they won’t). For their part, the Democrats have played to African-Americans and minority groups in general, promising to bring in a host of social programs and a fairer tax system (they won’t). Until this election, both parties were able to count on these constituencies.

But after more than a decade of pointless wars and a devastating recession, some voters on both sides – Bernie Sanders Democrats, Donald Trump’s Republicans – broke their leashes, at least for a time.

How will this end? Sadly, the U.S. election was not a revolution. It was not even a good insurrection, though perhaps a kind of family feud. Trump’s supporters see him as the lone gunslinger sent to clean up the town. But the town is too big, too complex, and besides, the new sheriff likes hanging out with the winners. The swamp being drained is already being filled in with other bog creatures of a familiar Republican sort.

The Trump era will predictably end in chaos, if not disaster; the respective party machines will again take over. From the point of view of the American oligarchy, why change a good thing?

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